Food In The Fort

Well, here I was ready to blame Krusteaz for all my problems in making lemon bars (or perhaps it’s “barz”), but it turns out that I just can’t make the dang things for love or money. Not for love, anyway. And I do love them, which is why I hit up my colleague and roommate (we share a classroom at school, not at home) for her awesome lemon squares recipe. She gave me the recipe, written out in her incredibly tidy handwriting, along with little pictures of lemons which she drew (she’s artistic!) and she even made us a batch. Thanks, Marjory!

(Funny story: my daughter Rachel ate almost all of said lemon squares on the way to the Panic! at the Disco concert and then became completely hyper. I’ve never heard a human talk so fast before.)

So I know that this recipe works, it just doesn’t work for me. When I made them, they turned out like lemon brownies – which isn’t really a BIG problem – lacking the stratification of the more traditional lemon square. I think that the problem was my failure to press the crust down firmly before baking it. So, press firmly and enjoy. Read the rest of this entry »

Rest assured, you’ll never catch Catherine or me separating eggs this way. Even if we’re making something complicated*, we’re firm believers in the KISS method. I’ve always been one to do the shell-to-shell toss method, and for all I know, Catherine simply plops the eggs in a bowl and then scoops out the yolks. It’s true that if you get yolk, which is mostly fat, into your egg whites then you’re not going to get those pretty Eiffel Tower-shaped peaks out of your meringue, but believe me, cooking isn’t this unforgiving. You don’t need to wear one of those white bunny suits and make all your meals in an isolation lab to have really good results.